Time-Varying Sliding Mode Control for ABS Control of an Electric Car

Abstract

Abstract Controller design for the Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS) of a wheeled vehicle is a challenging task because of the complex and nonlinear nature of the tyre-road interaction. An efficient ABS controller should be capable of maintaining the wheel slip at an optimal value, which is suitable for the particular road conditions experienced at a given instant in time, preventing the wheel from locking while braking. Many controller designs in the literature track either an optimal slip which is assumed constant or are not supported by experimental validation or simulation testing with higher order models. This paper first presents an ABS system based on a conventional Sliding Mode Control (SMC). The performance of this controller is tested on an experimental vehicle. The results are compared with simulation results obtained with both a quarter car model and a full-car model built in the Matlab/Simulink environment. The performance of this controller is improved by effective state estimation using a Sliding Mode Differentiator (SMD) where the results are benchmarked with an implementation using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The paper then presents a controller based on Time-Varying Sliding Mode Control (TV-SMC) which tracks an optimal slip trajectory.